I have yet to hear of any positive or favorable remarks about the new Windows Vista operating system, except from Microsoft that is. I suspect some sort of must have software will eventually crop up that is Vista only compatible that will force everyone to migrate, so we all might as well get ready for the change.

In the mean time I was wondering if anyone here has it or intends to get it. I am getting the impression that Vista is just a dot release with a huge price tag that offers little more than a fancy display screen and some security improvements any knowledgeable user already has through third party apps.

Microsoft says Vista brings many security improvements to the table. What would those be exactly? A crappy firewall? An integrated virus scan? Maybe that drive encryption feature. All of these features can be had by third party apps that are better than any integrated feature Micro$oft has offered.

Anything else worth noting? Aero? Oh great, fancy transparent windows. That’s worth a RAM upgrade, right? What about its use of system resources? If prior Windows releases are any indication, Vista will force many old computers into obsolescence.

Is there anything that Vista can do that XP cannot? I mean there is software I have now, things I do now, so how will Vista make what I am already doing better? I hear there are many software incompatibilities to contend with. It would be a shame to upgrade to a new OS just to find out it does not do anything different, or worse, will not run my apps.

How about the piracy issue? I saw there was a hoax keygen out there that had some webizens all a titter with indignation. Has Micro$oft given up on their doomed quest to protect their software (which only hurts clueless news anyway), or have they tried to challenge the hackers anew with more robust activation restrictions?

If you want my opinion, Vista is just a marketing ploy. They had 5 years to improve the software and all we get is XP service pack 3. This is a far cry from all the hubbub when Win 95 was released. Anyone care to make the case for Vista and enlighten the class as to its virtues?

Without even having seen it, I can state with complete confidence that there will have been the following 'improvements':

A new, highly aggravating registration process for the O/S

A more restrictive and intrusive DRM scheme that'll prevent you from playing, let alone copying, CD's and DVD's on your computer.

More hidden backdoors into your system that only Microshit, LE, and hackers will know about and use.

More useless crap bundled in with the O/S by Microshits 'partners' (read 'paid advertisments') that'll create an endless parade of pop-ups and 'system notifications' on your computer, in an attempt to get you to pay for 'upgrades', which really means extortion payments to leave you alone on your own computer. :rolleyes:

I will not be upgrading to Vista for the reasons given above.

Actually, I am migrating further towards Linux. I'm having trouble getting Wine to work RipIt4Me, but I'm getting closer. THAT is the ONLY thing keeping me on Window$.

I have uTorrent working under Linux along with a few other programs. To be honest, besides a few progs, Linux has equal or better software.

The DRM shit really pissed me off. The MPAA and RIAA have NO clue how to interpret the law properly. Of course, why should they. They threw a goddammed fit when cassette tapes came out. Now with entire discographies in torrents available I don't see how they can win the battle.

Also, I've read the reviews of Vista. Just like 95 it is going to be a stinker for a year. So, if you do want or need it, hold out until they get the bugs out. Many of the "new" features have been available for a while on other OSes. Tabbed browsing on the new Explorer?! Holy shit! :rolleyes: Too bad it can fuck up your SSL transactions.

Transparent windows? Very nice, if you are a power user. You can really benefit. But, again, Linux and others have had it for a while. And it does hog the RAM. I've heard that Vista may need 2 gigs of RAM to run optimumly. I rather spend the money on a terabyte of Seagates.

Tabbed browsing on IE. Wow! What an original idea. I wish Firefox would come up with something like that because it sounds useful. Oh, wait a minute, that's been a feature of Firefox forever and is why I dropped IE forever as the stinking pile of crap it is.

What's next for IE I suppose? Maybe plugins to improve functionality? Firefox beat you there. Browser restoration of tabs? Firefox. Easy customizability of core features. Firefox. A browser that does not crash and burn on every website. Firefox.

Now if only someone would come out with an app to completely rip IE out of windows and replace the file browsing with Firefox :)

Ooh, I almost forgot to mention that Windows has used the carrot and stick approach to get people to install that M$ authentication update (genuine advantage I believe) that tells you if your copy of XP is genuine or not. If you don't install it you can't get the latest IE or aero for XP! Oh no! Install a defective DRM tool to get two apps I don't want? HA!

In every profession there's always three words that scare the hell out of
the practitioners of said profession. For those students of engineering it's
usually "some assembly required". For the rest of us, and I speak as an
experienced systems programmer/analyst, "new and improved" is that phrase
that strikes fear into our hearts.

The only things I've heard about Vista are entirely negative. The biggest
complaint is that MicroShit is giving blowjobs to the MPAA and RIAA by
incorporating the so-called "anti-piracy" software. To MicroShit, MPAA, and
RIAA - BLOW ME YOU GREEDY COCKSUCKERS !

For those students of engineering it's
usually "complete assembly required (instructions not included, they can be purchased for $35.00)".

Fixed ;)

I've been running Vista x64 Ultimate pretty much since it was released to the public. It runs really good (better than XP on my computer) as long as you turn off all the bullshit that is suppose to protect your computer and all the completely unnecessary stuff.

Vista does take much better advantage of multi processor systems and it responds better to overclocking especially on a multi processor system. Probably why it runs better on my computer than XP.

I could really give two shits about upgraded security especially when someone who can't hack their way out of a wet paper bag can hack Vista with the standard security software.

The only software problem I have ran into yet is with SolidWorks and Foobar2000. And it's just little annoying graphical things (always on startup, never while running) that can be fixed by literally wiggling the program around.

Overall, I'm really happy with it but you will never ever get me to pay for a copy because I hear from a usually reliable source you can only activate the product key 3 times before it becomes invalid. If this is true it is complete bullshit for computer enthusiasts (gamers mostly) who upgrade their hardware at least 3 times in a year and require a complete reinstall of the OS.

EDIT: And I haven't had a single problem ripping, burning, infringing on copyrights, copying full DVD's, or general piracy on Vista.

If you are worried about all the DRM and anti-piracy and spyware stuff included in Windows Vista, you should use instead one of the last versions of its betas, called Longhorn, which are available as cracked pirate Torrent downloads. These features are all absent from Longhorn.

There is also a "Black" cracked version of Windows XP, an improved "Corporate" version with SP2 which does not require activation, and which has several other useful programs bundled with it. I have a Torrent for downloading it, which I will try to attach to this post if I can find out how to attach it. (Otherwise, I will upload it to Rapidshare or something).
P.S. I have since found that files cannot be attached to posts in this part of the forums, unfortunately.

Vista from the tests I have seen uses about 5-10 more watts of power at IDLE. So your baseline resources is (of course) diminished with Vista. There is no practical reason to upgrade to VISTA, and the people saying it is faster are truly experiencing the placebo effect. Of course x64 Vista will be faster than x86 XP (32bit), are you comparing XP64 to Vista64, probably not.

I'm going to stick to XP/2K as long as I can and then move to Linux when it matures a bit more. I like the Linux concept, but personally, I am not completely happy with the desktop experience it can offer (great for servers though).

I agree with megalomania, there will be some "reason" in a few years to upgrade to VISTA, probably as companies stop supporting XP with driver updates.

A new, highly aggravating registration process for the O/S

A more restrictive and intrusive DRM scheme that'll prevent you from playing, let alone copying, CD's and DVD's on your computer.

More hidden backdoors into your system that only Microshit, LE, and hackers will know about and use.


Exactly why I hate MS and won't upgrade to Vista. I don't like when a corporate big brother watches me.The only reason I'm not on Linux right now is the games support.

Frunk, you may want to investigate Cedega. It is non-free software for linux, but you should find it in warez. However, it requires a monthly subscription.

It allows you to play window$ games under linux. I know it's not ideal, but once your hate for MS grows as much and as deep as mine has, you might want to compromise.

Check it out if you want:
http://www.transgaming.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=2&meid=-1

Otherwise you can tackle Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator). It is free, but may give you troubles at times. But it is getting better everyday.

In my experience, Vista isn't worth upgrading to unless you have a bunch of computing power to spare.
I installed it on an old desktop with a gig of RAM, and everything slowed down. Vista hogged up all the system's resources, even with Aero and all the other crap turned off. I ended up downgrading back to XP.
But a laptop that I purchased with 4 gigs of RAM running vista (64bit) runs great.

My take is, if you're buying a new comp with plenty of memory and a decent processor, vista is fine, no reason to downgrade to XP like a lot of users are doing. But the new, transparent interface and minimal security upgrades really aren't worth the price, or the pain in the ass for anyone looking for an upgrade of an older comp.

I'm in a split mind, a while back I had Vista on the laptop (fairly old) and it ran like a charm, looked great and was fast etc. After a month or two it went from good to bad, it started chugging and things started to 'break'.

I ended up shitcanning it and went back to XP, haven't regretted it for a second. The only advantage it (Vista) had over XP was that it looked better, security was poor, compatibility still is poor. Aside from that, I wont be using it any time soon.

XP and SUSE in this household :)

From what I have used vista I can say that it has more than a double use of memory on idle compared to xp(350mb idle on xp, 990mb idle on vista).
With the computer I use atm I will seriously not upgrade to vista, it has nothing for me.

DirectX 10, my GPU has only 9.0c
I'd have to buy a new sound card (my Hercules 5.1 game surround muse has no vista drivers)
It would not fit on the 7gb partition that I have for windows.
It is slow unless you have atleast 2gb of ddr2 and a higher end dual core. (I have AMD Athlon 64 3500+ OC @ 2,45 GHz with 1,2gb ddr1)
I have allready all the eye candy vista could provide to me on my xubuntu installation (tough I use Gnome instead of xfce).

I seriously recommend upgrading to xp from vista, or taking a leap and start using linux. Unless you are a hard core gamer or movie editor linux has everything you need. Just don't think is "a free copy of windows" it is LiNUX not windows, thus it is different.

It came with my laptop, and I have not had any problems with it. I get fewer crashes than I got with XP on my other machines, and the few times I had a Vista program lock up I didnt need to do a soft reboot. The error handling just closes the offending program without resorting to ctrl-alt-del. I have never had to do a hard reboot with Vista, yet.

But I wouldn't upgrade a XP machine for the reasons given by others.

I didn't tried Vista and won't do that for a long time. When I read a news long time ago about "small" bug it had I said myself that is still half-baked product that I might test in a year or two when they finish it. Imagine a OS that support voice recognition and voice control but also allow that hostile web site play a voice message that order your OS to erase all dll's. Hm. I can't wait to see the patch for that...warning message "you can't do that because your speakers are on" :-D.

As for spy shit big brother do... I like Firefox 3.0 (warning not all add-ons Mega recomended in other thread work under 3.0). When you scroll add-ons you notice that Windows Genuine Advantage is "turned off for your safety" :-).

I would switch to Linux if I'm not so old and lazy to learn yet another OS handling. But since my country invested lot of money to go to localized open source OS and Office programs on governmental level I might be forced to do so.

As you know I've used Linux for a long damn time. I do have some MS machines and have to use their shit at work but there is a reality and FUTI stated it simply...with a MS product; WAIT! Some present machines are "Vista-designed". They can & will offer a platform that will be functional. The roll-out for Windows 95 was a case study in how MS does things. If you ever really want to know how that company operates, research that product. (it was a DOS product....all Windows products are DOS until NT kernel products like NT3.51 / 4.x & WIN2K)

I know a wee bit about Microsoft.....Marketing runs their show not the production people (programmers, etc). If a release candidate is functional, they get a time-line and that's life: it's gotta' be released THEN or heads will roll..... Programming for beta-glitch issues be damned. And aside from all that Vista is a graphics milieu. It's designed to look pretty. I don't want to pay for "pretty". If others do....that's great. I see nothing wrong with that; in itself. It's just not a priority for me.

Linux is very nice, I run it on all of my servers but not on my main machine (due to most of the software I use being native to windows, tried WINE and it didn't feel 'right'). I am slowly changing that, I am now using open office which I think is much better than M$'s product and am looking for open source multiplatform software when I need a certain program.

Charles - How is WINE (wine is not a emulator, funny how I remember that) today? When I last used it it felt sluggish and just didn't feel right, compatibility was also pretty low (couldn't get photoshop or my usenet client to work).

Frankly I also use Open Office!

We all have that "feel" you're talking about. What I like is a "snappy" fast painting screen. [I was a real 'UX and DOS freak. I really felt at home with a prompt.] So I can't comment directly because what I like may not be important to you. But I'll try with a generalist comment of what it will do with REAL Windows-oriented programs that are REALLY made for the MS product.

I have a friend still works in Marketing and uses Adobe products. Photoshop being his mainstay. This guy REALLY uses this stuff and was an Adobe beta tester for about 6 years. He wanted a box I had that had the ability to hold 4+ DVD drives on a SCSI card so I gave it to him for a amp that he had (he isn't into playing anymore). The box had SUSI 9x and Samba as a client but someone had put in WINE and not played with it. (I'm almost sure it was WINE). The new SUSI doesn't have a lot of conflicts like Red Hat; you can just put stuff in and play with it. Kernel upgrades are VERY smooth.....It not like the old Berkley UNIX and all that "compile and wait & see shit". It ran faster with 2Gigs & a large Intel single (I think a 2.3Gb) or something close than his AMD dual core 64! & the last XP (Sept) and the Vista upgrade. Most guys don't use emulators anymore; even though they still have a following. BUT.....the version wasn't the latest PhotoShop! That was something I remember. Red Hat doesn't like Adobe products. SUSI likes everything. I'm still on SUSI 10x on a dual core HP for work. The WINE you want is .0.9.52

I have a thing about seeing the screen paint or freeze. I want that screen to paint faster than my eyes can perceive. That's my "feel" thing. IF you have a similar feel issue....you'll dig it. But if your issue is with great sound I must say that Windows high end sound drivers beat any 'UX driver I've heard....Just my opinion. I also like a very "business-like" look & feel. I play music very rarely on a computer, that what I have a stereo for (or a fucking iPod or whatever).

I also have a younger friend who plays games. He tried to get some stuff to work and said that he was surprised that SOME stuff DOES not only light up but runs well with fewer freezes. BUT he doesn't play on-line stuff. My deal is with SUSI because it's very European and is very "serious" looking. It also has a FAST set-up. So I can wipe a laptop and get SUSI on that thing just like Windows. Version 10 is "prettier" than version 9x that looks like a "government" machine as it will boot to a prompt box unless you configure the thing to hide root completely. It was made that way because in Germany they love to connect to stuff in coffee shops or at University I think. Check this place; I read it all the fucking time:
http://www.linux.com/articles/54920

....it's a Windows product, you are never going to hear very many good things about it. Not to mention Vista is a complete memory and CPU hog with all the fancy desktop animations and graphics. I don't need the fucking menu bar to make noise and light up every time I open it? Things like that, and the overall downgrade from XP (ie; strict rules on emulation, tcp/ip tools removed -somebody told me they couldn't even telnet from a vista command prompt-, etc) have made it worthless.

But what do you expect, like I said, Windows is geared towards the mainstream average computer user with no knowledge of how the system operates or its basic fundamentals, Anyone remotely serious about computers does NOT use a Windows OS unless its an absolute must (emulation, games, non-portable programs like photoshop). And even if you do play games, there is a module out now that lets you install DX10 on XP (not like you need it, a recent test on high-end gaming machines led researchers to the conclusion that DX10 did NOT make any significant boost on the benchmarking results).

I suggest any Unix variant, specifically one using the Linux Kernel. For n00bs I would recommend Ubuntu or Knoppix. Or if you REALLY want to learn the Unix operating system, Slackware.

In other words, if you don't want to go through the trouble of installing a Linux distro, keep Windows XP until Micro$oft drops there extended support phase (sometime in 2010 I think?) and then move on.

NT4 was as close to a functional system as they made. Microsoft, being marketing controlled, drove past what could have allowed them to control where the future goes. They are actually always try to decide.....and that's part of the problem. There needs to be a real business/enterprise foundational system and a "home. noob, intro-system", that has enough add-on's for the "advanced" home user. For those who really DO use XP, they spend a GREAT deal of time STRIPPING DOWN th "bells and whistles" junk to get to the heart of their system. I am not exaggerating that I believe that the heart of their NT system could generally be less than half the size sold as is.

They're releases were just more bells & whistles......very little new shit. The look and feel difference between NT 3.51 and 4 was the old windows and what many think of as the "win95 look". They stuck there until XP with that "fuck me I'm Irish green start button". I'm really not a fan of MS products. I actually didn't even have an XP machine until about 8 months ago. The idea of hardware chasing software and the continued expansion of drive size, RAM and chip size (& speed / strength) is ludicrous! In 1989 the larger, real business machines (outside of real Mini's and Mainframes) was 40Mb. Novell on top of DOS worked remarkably well. The concept of wireless was spoken of back in the 90's with the understanding that it could never really be safe. Today, no financial institution has invested in wireless for any CRITICAL office-level function and WANs are still using the telco or sat-com system. MIT did several experiments with such small EMP "weapons" as Tesla Coils & found that students could stop many businesses cold with a battery powered device. Imagine what a really powerful EMP weapon could do if pointed at a business dependent on low gigahertz frequency?

To gather the market share MS drove Novell into the completion to use wireless & the public bought it. Now that's all history because the public believes that their stuff is secure because MS continually boasts about it's "government-level" security! We actually had gone backwards in security from the days of direct BBS contacts via telco line and old style DOS PGP encrypted bursts of text.

A LONG time back their support people were all told to always make reference to "Microsoft DOS" or "Microsoft windows", always demanding that they put the company name into everyday discussions. Their marketing people are ALL the female 20-something recent grads, who actually do all the ground pounding for a the 50-something male marketing decision makers. Those fucks crunch numbers until they actually get back to square-one over and over but never learn anything new.

Fixed ;)

I've been running Vista x64 Ultimate pretty much since it was released to the public. It runs really good (better than XP on my computer) as long as you turn off all the bullshit that is suppose to protect your computer and all the completely unnecessary stuff.


That pretty much says it all:
Once you disable all the things M$ put in Vista which was supposed to be "better" than XP it works better than XP if you have a top-notch processor!

Of course, WINE is getting better and better on my 1GHz Pentium 4 (which had Windows ME on it before getting reformatted!), and I get all sortsa neat things running on it like Half-Life 2, etc.

Why M$ decided to upgrade the OS to one which is slower on everyone's pre-existing PC and expected everyone to PAY for the privilage is completely beyond me.

Bah.

Has any one herd of "Workstation 2008" it is Microsoft Windows Server 2008 turned into a workstation, it has the SAME kernel as vista but uses 2/3 of the ram and is more responsive, or so I have heard. It doesn't also have any DRM crap, who would need drm on a server?

http://blogs.msdn.com/vijaysk/archive/2008/02/11/using-windows-server-2008-as-a-super-desktop-os.aspx

I have Vista Home Premium on my desktop (it came with it) since it came out. My XP-running laptop crashed beyond repair at the worst possible time, so I had to get a desktop with preinstalled Vista (the only computer my wallet was able to pay for after spending some 800€ on chemicals and lab equipment).

It worked great for the first month, but then it started to run slower and slower, until it started to show some real trouble right around Christmas. I started looking for a replacement, but due to a lack of time due to massive amounts of schoolwork and the de facto start of 2007/2008 debating season, I couldn't do any real research in this field.

When the school year ended in June, I was finally able to check and compare the features and I decided to buy a MacBook Pro. It's a 15" model with 4GB of memory, 200GB HDD and 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU. Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard works like a charm and has, in my opinion at least, a better user interface. I'm definitely not going back to Windows in the next four years.

Eye candy and games sell, lots of feature bullets sell slightly lesss. Nobody cares about resource use because the freaking machines keep dropping in cost.

I seem to be unable to find the reference but I read some where that the days of cheap computers might be over in a few (maybe tens of) years.
But damn I don't remember correctly why it would happened It made sense tough.
Had to do something with economics and availability of materials, knowledge and manufacturing capacity.

Sorry for a post that might have little intellectual value.

But seriously, there will be a time when adding the n+1:th core won't any more bring enough performance rise to run the bloated software, be it silicon, carbon or biological chips. This of course won't probably be a threath that is close.

Now back on operating systems. Do you remember when you used a pc with 133Mhz pentium, 16mb ram, 2gb of hdd and you did fine?
You surfed the web with your IE 1.0 on Windows 95, and it was fast and responsive.
Now even my ADSL modem (233Mhz ARM w/ 32mb ram) has more processing power than my first machine (p1 133Mhz,16mb ram).
It has so much power that I'm thinking about transforming an slightly damaged ADSL-wlan modem in to a desktop. But seriously I think that there will be two lines of hardware and software in the future the efficient ones making use the resources available and the ones that are bloated and need more and more resources to do the same which they did before.

Sorry if I wandered off the topic :)
This post became longer than originally tought.